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MP asks health secretary for funding boost amid GP practice list closure

A Labour MP has written to health secretary Jeremy Hunt to call for an overhaul of policies for funding and training GPs.

Sefton Central MP Bill Esterson said on his website that this comes as constituents complain of a local GP practice not being able to accept new patients for a year.

High Pastures Surgery, in Maghull near Liverpool, was forced to close its patient list unless there were ‘exceptional circumstances’, after struggling to recruit enough GPs to meet patient demand.

Mr Esterson said it was not suprising that the practice is struggling to accept patients, as it ’has the highest number of frail elderly patients on their books in Maghull and Lydiate and therefore faces greater pressure than other GP practices’.

According to Mr Esterson, the practice in question offers ’a very high standard of care but due to cuts in NHS funding, it is clearly becoming increasingly difficult for High Pastures, through no fault of their own’.

He also pointed to Government cuts to social care funding and not ensuring the training of sufficient numbers of GPs and other healthcare staff.

Mr Esterson said: ’The GPs and staff at High Pastures are doing all they can but unless we see a complete shift in policy from the Government the problems at High Pastures and at other GP practices are not going to go away…

’That is why I have written to health secretary Jeremy Hunt calling for investment in our GP surgeries and in social care.’